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The Bubonic Plague And These 4 Other Diseases Surprisingly Still Exist Today
Medical diseases have existed since ancient times. We've read about the horrors of the bubonic plague in history lessons, but did you know that even the plague technically still exists today?
Over time, modern medicine has eradicated some of the most devastating diseases in the U.S., like smallpox, polio, rubella, malaria, and diphtheria. However, diseases like tuberculosis (TB) and the mumps do continue to exist. While it may surprise you that the following five diseases still exist today, we have come along way to treating them as well.
1. Leprosy
Mycobacterium leprae (Credit: Kateryna Kon/Shutterstock)
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), approximately 225 Americans are diagnosed annually with leprosy, otherwise known as Hansen's Disease. Mycobacterium leprae causes the bacterial infection, leprosy, and primarily affects the nerves and skin. It causes skin discoloration, nodules, and burning, which can lead to disfigurement if not treated. Numbness can also occur, typically in the hands and feet.
At one time, people with leprosy were isolated in colonies — due to the fear that it was easily transmitted. But we have since learned that prolonged close contact with an infected person is required for the disease to spread. Another route of transmission is from armadillos to humans. Most people are immune to leprosy and there's an effective combination of antibiotic treatment for those who do contract it.
Read More: Leprosy Cases Are Rising in the U.S.
2. Tuberculosis
Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Credit: nobeastsofierce/Shutterstock)
While TB dates back 9,000 years, the disease still kills over a million people each year across the world. In 2022, about 8,000 people in the U.S. Were diagnosed with tuberculosis — and another 13 million were classified as having latent tuberculosis.
Mycobacterium tuberculosis causes this disease, which has symptoms like a cough, chest pain, fever, and loss of appetite. TB is transmitted through the inhalation of droplets released from an infected person who coughs or talks.
There are two types of testing methods for TB, a skin test and a blood test. If someone is found to have an active case of TB, there is a treatment regimen of antibiotics. Typically, these are taken for months.
Read More: What Is the Drug Bedaquiline and Why Is It Important for Those With Tuberculosis?
3. The Mumps
Paramyxovirus (Credit: Corona Borealis Studio/Shutterstock)
A virus belonging to the Paramyxoviridae family causes the mumps. And although the disease still exists, cases have been reduced by 99 percent since the mumps vaccine program started in the late 1960s.
When someone is infected with mumps, it can take between two to three weeks until symptoms emerge — including a swollen, painful jaw, puffy cheeks, tiredness, weight loss, and fever. Mumps is spread through respiratory droplets or saliva. It can be transmitted through sneezing, talking, or coughing. It can also be spread by sharing utensils or drinking from the same cup as an infected person.
While there is no cure for mumps, treatment usually includes rest, fluids, and pain relief. Typically, symptoms usually subside in about 5 days.
Read More: 6 Respiratory Illnesses That Could Mean Trouble for Your Lungs
4. Whooping Cough
Bordetella pertussis (Credit: Kateryna Kon/Shutterstock)
There are more than 10,000 cases of whooping cough each year in the U.S. A bacterial based disease, whooping cough is also called pertussis — named after the bacteria Bordetella pertussis – and affects the lungs and airway.
Symptoms most notably include a severe, intense cough that eventually causes people to inhale, which results in the "whooping" sound. Not everyone with whooping cough will develop the characteristic whooping sound. Other symptoms include runny nose, fever, and nasal congestion.
Treatment includes antibiotics and vaccines, but you can still catch whooping cough even if vaccinated. Usually when this happens, symptoms are usually milder.
Read More: Why Are Viruses More Active In The Winter?
5. Plague: The Black Death
(Credit: MichaelTaylor/Shutterstock)
The bacterium, Yersinia pestis, causes the plague and there are two forms called bubonic and pneumonic. The bubonic plague is the most common. The black plague killed about 25 million people in Europe during Middle Ages — and currently affects about five to 15 people each year in the U.S.
Symptoms include swollen lymph nodes in the groin, armpits, or neck; high fever; chills, and muscle cramps. The plague can spread through an infected flea that is connected to a pet or small wild animal.
When the plague is suspected, people are usually hospitalized and immediately treated with antibiotics. Sometimes they are isolated. Support measures include I.V. Liquids, oxygen, and breathing support. The plague is life threatening and considered a potential bioweapon.
Read More: Scientists Reveal the Black Death's Origin Story
Article Sources
Our writers at Discovermagazine.Com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:
Allison Futterman is a Charlotte, N.C.-based writer whose science, history, and medical/health writing has appeared on a variety of platforms and in regional and national publications. These include Charlotte, People, Our State, and Philanthropy magazines, among others. She has a BA in communications and a MS in criminal justice.
Deadly Diseases
"… [N]ever send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." Poet John Donne wrote these lines in his "Meditation XVII" as the feared Black Death ravaged his native London in 1624.
The plague seems like a disease of a distant century, conjuring up the rat-infested cities of medieval Europe. The word that terrified whole regions of the Earth is now commonly used in its metaphorical sense, meaning any bothersome thing.
Yet the highly infectious disease borne of the bacterium Yersinia pestis still persists. From 1,000 to 3,000 cases of plague are reported each year globally, 10 to 15 of them in the western United States.
The plague bacterium is carried to humans in the bite of a flea that has first feasted on an infected rodent. Initial symptoms — sudden fever, headache, muscle pain, nausea — are indistinguishable from other illnesses. As it advances, however, the dreaded bubonic plague causes painful swellings (buboes) in the lymph nodes. Septicemic plague infects the bloodstream. Pneumonic plague, which can be passed from human to human, occurs when the bacillus moves into the pulmonary system, choking off breathing.
Infection in all forms can be fatal unless treated immediately with antibiotics, such as streptomycin. Mortality rates for treated individuals range from 1 percent to 15 percent for bubonic plague to 40 percent for septicemic plague. In untreated victims, the rates rise to about 50 percent for bubonic and 100 percent for septicemic. The mortality rate for untreated pneumonic plague is 100 percent; death occurs within 24 hours.
In the 1330s, bubonic plague broke out in China and was transported back to Europe by traders. The disease struck swiftly there. The Italian writer Boccaccio said that its victims "ate lunch with their friends and dinner with their ancestors in paradise." In Italy, the plague killed more than any war ever had. The cities of Venice and Pisa lost three-quarters of their populations, wiping out entire extended families.
In England, the plague took on the name Black Death, because of the characteristic spots that started under the skin as a deep red and turned black. As fleas reappeared each spring, so did the plague, killing one-third of Europe's people — 25 million — in five years.
Without any medical explanation for the scourge, people appealed to God for deliverance. When their prayers went unanswered and the plague persisted, they sought scapegoats, such as women, lepers, and Jews, claiming that they deliberately spread the disease, or at least brought it on as God's vengeance on them.
The plague remained a constant, though diminished, presence over the next two centuries. But in 1665, it returned to England. This single yearlong outbreak, known as the Great Plague, claimed the lives of 100,000 Londoners — one person in every five died.
The children's song "Ring Around the Rosy," of unknown origin, is believed by many to capture the experience of having the plague. A "rosy" is the initial reddish skin spot. "Pocketful of posies" refers to the sweet flowers that victims carried inconspicuously to cover the stench of their disease. "Ashes, ashes" indicates impending death, or the cremation of dead bodies. In England, this line is generally sung as "A-tishoo, a-tishoo," a reference to the uncontrollable sneezing that was also symptomatic of the disease. "We all fall down" indicates death itself. (Others disregard the interpretation, citing the song's many versions and publication date centuries later as proof that the song is nothing more than an innocent children's rhyme and schoolyard game.)
The plague is a local phenomenon in some parts of Africa and Asia, with fairly recent outbreaks occurring in Vietnam and India. There is no commercially available vaccine at the moment, since the risk of acquiring plague from a flea bite is low. Treatment, however, is highly effective using the antibiotic tetracyclene, and virtually all cases can be cured if treated early enough. Of global concern, though, is the threat of Y. Pestis becoming a bioterror weapon, particularly if the bacteria can be turned into an aerosol, actually an exceedingly difficult and unlikely prospect.
Hundreds of animals can host the plague bacillus, including cats, dogs, rabbits, and squirrels. This vast reservoir of infection in the animal world ensures that the plague, which has killed almost 200 million people and perhaps caused more fear than any other infectious disease, will almost certainly never be eradicated from the planet.
Return to Deadly Diseases
Why Plague Caught Madagascar Unaware
Madagascar is facing the worst outbreak of plague in 50 years.
There have been more than 1,800 cases and 127 deaths since the start of August, according to new figures.
The island off the south-east coast of Africa is used to seeing about 400 cases of mostly bubonic plague in the same rural areas every year.
But this year it has developed into the deadlier pneumonic version and spread to much more populated areas, including the capital.
The WHO describes the plague as "one of the oldest - and most feared - of all diseases".
Historically, plague has been responsible for widespread pandemics with extremely high numbers of deaths.
It was known as the Black Death during the 14th Century, killing more than 50 million people across Europe.
Bubonic v pneumonic plague:
The good news is that a simple short course of antibiotics can cure the plague, providing it is given early.
The current outbreak in Madagascar is also slowing down, with the number of cases falling in the past couple of weeks.
But the World Health Organization is warning further spikes could be on the way.
It says "despite the relative ease of treatment, plague's association with the Black Death weighs heavily on the popular conscience - and is regularly cited in media reports and tabloid headlines about outbreaks".
So how did this outbreak become the worst in recent times?
Unabated spread
"An outbreak of plague no longer unfolds in the manner portrayed by our history books," said Dr Sylvie Briand, director of WHO's Infectious Hazard Management Department.
"Plague is an old disease, but the challenges it poses today are contemporary and fundamentally different from what we had even 40 years ago."
The medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres has been responding to the outbreak in one of the worst hit areas of Tamatave.
Dr Tim Jagatic told BBC News the outbreak had spread to populated areas when a man infected with bubonic plague had travelled from the highlands to the capital and then on to the coastal city of Tamatave by bus.
Treatment centres have been set up
"He had the bubonic form of the plague and entered into one of the major cities, where the bubonic version of the disease had the potential of turning into the pneumonic form without treatment.
"He was in a closed environment with many people when he started to develop severe symptoms, and he started to transmit the pneumonic form of the disease to others."
Dr Jagatic said this had happened in late August, which is outside the normal plague season of September to April, in an area that never usually saw pneumonic plague.
It meant people weren't expecting the plague - and certainly not the type that could spread from person to person.
"So it wasn't recognised until later," he said, allowing the disease to "proliferate over a period of time unabated".
This index case infected 31 other people, according to the WHO, four of whom died.
It wasn't until a couple of weeks later that an outbreak of the plague was detected and officially confirmed.
Since then, the country's Ministry of Health and other health agencies have swung into action, and cases have started to decline since mid-October.
The risk of this outbreak spreading globally is considered low, and the WHO has advised against any travel restrictions.
Response:
"Most people haven't experienced plague on this scale before… so it's putting a lot of anxiety and strain on the health system," said Olivier Le Polain, an epidemiologist from the UK's Rapid Support Team, which is helping the Madagascan government with its response.
"There's also fear in the population.
"There's an on-going risk going forward because the plague endemic season doesn't end until the end of April so, knowing it's in areas such as the capital, we need heightened vigilance."
The WHO describes the overall risk for the island as "very high".
There are also serious concerns about the potential spread of the disease beyond Madagascar.
Frequent travel by air and sea to and from neighbouring countries means the risk of the disease spreading to places including Mozambique, the Seychelles, South Africa, and Tanzania is considered "moderate".
The WHO says it is helping those countries to step up surveillance and prepare for a potential outbreak.
However, it says, the overall risk of the plague spreading globally is low.
WHO official Tarik Jasarevic told BBC News the organisation "advises against any restriction on travel or trade to Madagascar based on the current information available".
"The evidence tells us that the risks associated with shutting borders are higher than keeping them open."
Back at the MSF treatment centre in Tamatave, Dr Jagatic said the country was now much better prepared as the plague season continued.
"Outbreaks are always difficult to predict. Right now we're seeing a decrease in cases, but that doesn't mean this is over," he said.
"We're prepared for a spike, and want to make absolutely sure we won't be caught off guard again."
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